Nick Clegg backs ending of child benefit payments for children who live abroad

[dipsydoodle]

Nick Clegg has voiced strong support for coalition plans to end what he called the "perverse" system in which child benefit is paid for EU children living outside Britain whose parents work in the UK.

The deputy prime minister said there was "complete unity" in the coalition over plans to tighten benefits for EU citizens as he said that the last Labour government had dealt a "body blow" by failing to impose limits when Poland and seven other eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004.

But Clegg dismissed a proposal, recently leaked by Theresa May's office, to impose a cap on the number of EU citizens that could come to Britain. He said David Cameron had also rejected the idea.

On his weekly LBC phone-in, the deputy prime minister said: "What we are focusing on – and by the way in the coalition there is complete unity between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – is to tighten up the rules about when you have access to benefits when you come to this country from other EU countries. On that I am as forceful as anybody else in saying if you come here to look for work – fine, you've got that right, just as we have got the right to do that in your country. But you don't necessarily have the right just to simply claim benefits, no questions asked.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/09/nick-clegg-ending-child-benefit-payment-parents-abroad-eu

[djean111]

1. After reading the comments on this, it seems like a little foreshadowing of the TPP.

The UK does not want to pay for children who do not live in the UK, but whose EU parents live and work there, and pay taxes and do not use the schools. So it seems that the UK is saying well, the EU is nice and all that, for our purposes, but we don't think UK policies should override what we want to do in the UK. I can see what both sides are saying.
This does seem like the sort of thing that will happen with the TPP - and I am really curious to know that if, in addition to saying fuck you to countries and states and municipalities who have inconvenient laws and rules and regulations - will the TPP enable foreign corporations to stop paying their share of, say, Social Security and Medicare? After all, that affects their bottom line. Or, hey! maybe the current soulless "health care delivery system" we have now had firmly nailed into place will piss off some other country that has humane single payer health care. Or, further, maybe other countries will see how very very much money is to be made by doing what the United States does.
The bottom line will be money for the few.

[Ken Burch]

2. I'm guessing Clegg thinks he can swing voters over from UKIP by taking this position.

What he doesn't get is that, in addition to being anti-European integration(the LibDems are the most "pro-Europe" party in British politics)UKIP is also racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and anti-social benefit(I'm not sure if they approve of cute little puppy dogs, either).

The only swing voters away from UKIP are going to be those who swing back to the Tories(the original home of most of UKIP's founders). NOTHING would ever swing them over to the LibDems, even support for glacier-hearted policies like this.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. It seems to me that child benefits are for the purpose of bringing up children

for whom there's a realistic expectation that they will live and work in Britain - ie they should be in Britain when the benefits are given. We wouldn't fund the schools for the children outside the UK either. So I think Clegg has a fair point on this.